Protesters attacked and stormed the headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo, calling for Egypt's president Mohammed Morsi to step down. NBC's Ayman Mohyeldin reports.
By F. Brinley Bruton, NBC News
The headquarters of the President Mohammed Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood were looted and ransacked early on Monday in the wake of?a day of violence that left at least 16 people dead and more than 700 injured in protests throughout the country.
The bloodiest incident of the weekend's huge and mostly peaceful protests against?President Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood?began after dark and continued for hours, with guards inside the suburban Cairo building firing on youths hurling fire bombs and rocks. Reuters cited medical and security sources as saying that eight people were killed but the figure could not be independently confirmed by NBC News.
Khaled Desouki / AFP - Getty Images
Egyptian men carry items looted from the burnt headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo on Monday.
Protesters breached ?the Cairo compound's defenses and stormed the building. Crowds later carried off furniture, files, rugs, air conditioning units and portraits of Morsi, according to an Associated Press journalist. One protester emerged with a pistol and handed it over to a policeman outside. ?
Footage on local television showed broken windows, blackened walls and smoke coming out of the building. A fire was still raging on one floor hours after the building was invaded. One protester tore down the Muslim Brotherhood sign from the building's front wall, while another hoisted Egypt's red, black and white flag out an upper-story window and waved it in the air in triumph.
The images were reminiscent of the destruction of the state security headquarters when Hosni Mubarak was toppled in 2011.
A spokesman for the Brotherhood said it would be demanding answers from security officials who failed to protect it. ?He said two of those inside were injured ?before a security detail from the movement was able to evacuate all those inside the compound in mid-morning.
Organizers behind Sunday's protests -- who managed to get 22 million signatures calling on Morsi to step down -- ?said they would give him until Tuesday at 5 p.m. (11 a.m. ET) to meet their demands otherwise they would call for nationwide strikes.?
Egypt's Tahrir Square continues to be the center of violent protests more than two years after the Arab Spring ousted long-time ruler Hosni Mubarak. Now, supporters and opponents of President Mohammed Morsi are clashing, with efforts afoot to remove the democratically elected leader, NBC's Ayman Mohyeldin reports.
Protesters also demanded?early elections, but late on Sunday night word from the presidential palace was that Morsi had no intentions of calling them.?
Some anti-Morsi protesters spent Sunday night in dozens of tents pitched in the capital's central Tahrir Square and in front of the president's Ittihadiya Palace. They have vowed to stay there until Morsi resigns. Morsi supporters, meanwhile, went on with their sit-in in front of a major mosque in Cairo.?
Sunday's protests were the largest seen in Egypt in the 2? years of turmoil since the ouster of autocratic Mubarak in February 2011.?
NBC News' Ayman Mohyeldin and Charlene Gubash, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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This story was originally published on Mon Jul 1, 2013 7:05 AM EDT
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